A month on the road with the X-H1
Quick short thoughts from my hammock
It was love at first sight: finally, the gods colluded together to create the perfect camera body! They named it X-H1. It had everything for it: 4k video, decadent slow-mo, fantastic sensor, great autofocus, the best shutter sound on the market (under $2k), a great ergonomics and speed. I praised this camera for it’s awesomeness: and hear me out, it is still a tremendous value and package that will cover 99% of most people’s need.
But. For the 1%… for the one that wants THE BEST and nothing less, the X-H1 isn’t “it”. The Canon 1Dx Mark II would sadly be it (Nikon D5 doesn’t offer 120p slowmo). Yes, you get what you pay for I suppose. Make no mistake: I am not fan of spending money on gear…I love bargain and good value items. The X-H1 seemed like a helluva deal.
I could buy 4 more bodies for the price of ONE 1Dx mark ii. Anyway. Pardon the format of this review: I am writing it on my iPad, comfortably settled into a hammock near the beach, still slightly hungover from yesterday’s party with local Brazilians people. I am not too far away from Fortaleza, right at the North East point of Brazil.
I left Montreal a month ago to keep travelling around the world with my Jeep. I decided to explore the rest of Brazil this time.
The simple life
Taken by the X-H1
Taken by the X-H1 as well.
I got three cameras with me: the Fuji X-H1, the XE1 and the Canon 1D Mark IV. In hindsight, I should have also got a 1Dx but oh well.
3 months old Fuji VS 10 years old Canon. Sorry for the weird exposure.
The Canon 1D is 10 years old, yet it feels like new. The X-H1 is three months old: it won’t survive another decade, that’s for sure.
Some quick thoughts:
I never had so much dust on a sensor! The X-H1 really is a dust magnet. Unreal.
The knob to change drive mode is super hard to turn now. Unsure why.
The camera now appears to stay awake even when the bluetooth is off. It’s like it tries to send photos but… the auto-transfer is turned off
the eye-cup more or less degraded to the point of needing replacement. I simply removed it.
Now, it is all minor, except that Fuji claimed to target professionals with the X-H1. It is supposed to be the flagship of their line-up. Will it survive French Guiana and Suriname? Africa? Mongolia? Time will tell.
Fuji launched this product at around $3k CAD in 2018. It does not match Nikon D300/D8xx/D500 build quality. It is vastly superior to the D750, D600, D5xxx, D3xxx, maybe somewhere between a D7500 and D500 quality.
No, I don’t feel confident in the Fuji anymore, unlike my good old x-pro2. It might not be the rugged camera for professionals that Fuji intended to target, but maybe more for prosumers. Which is fine. It’s too bad that Fuji killed their X-Pro series with the X-Pro3: it would have been the ultimate travel camera, if it wouldn’t have been for a terrible screen design (cannot be used to vlog). The X-Pro2 was more rugged than the X-H1.
I will give more updates as the trip goes on!
JP
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